Various Artists - Delsin 2.0

Various Artists - Delsin 2.0
Amsterdam's Delsin label has been run by Marsel Van Der Wielen for the better part of 12 years. Originally happy to explore anything and everything to do with electronic music, the label is now firmly rooted in releasing big club tracks, particularly with Detroit-flavoured stylings. But whereas reverence towards the past—and to distant places—has often been the undoing of lesser labels, Marsel and Delsin have been able to reinvigorate their sound by constantly bringing in new talent to refresh and complement the more established names. This is, after all, the label who gave debuts to Newworldaquarium, Aardvarck and D5 while simultaneously releasing solid tracks by Redshape, Rolando, Shed, Quince, Chymera and Vince Watson amongst others. Most, but not all appear here, but the point is loud and clear: Van Der Wielen simply has one of the best ears for dance music around.

It's almost impossible to pick a starting point. Across all 23 tracks there is a sustained intensity that makes it so that each track seems to be better than the last. The style is most certainly Detroit-influenced though. Quince's "Sub-01" is perhaps the quintessence of this sound, being both bubbling and driving, whereas his "Contracting" is more stripped back and electro-fuelled. Nubian Mindz "Africa Man" which opens things, Steve Rachmad's chiming "Rond" and Vince Watson also flirt heavily with the Motor City sound. Watson's "Long Way from Home" blends old school synth and percussion with taut, jazz keyboards while the piano-led closing track "Solitude" diverges into an upbeat world of jazz and light. "Believer" cleverly rips up the 4-4 and splatters it back in restless, broken pieces.

Newworldaquarium's two short tracks are both watery, in keeping with his moniker. The fast-ambient surge of "Bond" ripples upwards like a fountain while the bass weight undertow in "Twenty" works like a spoiler to keep the ride low to ground. Taho's "Forest of wonders" builds and builds, using its speed, subtle polyrhythms and coagulating drones to stretch the dub techno patterns to their breaking point. Redshape, meanwhile, manages to gleefully destroy his own "Shaped World" with the "stripped" version that mashes morse code and brutal funk together without sympathy. "Steam," on the other hand, is a classic analogue workout from the masked crusader whereas "Misc Usage" is sharp and sleazy and slots in nicely with his other Shaped World releases.

Shed sounds unsurprisingly like Shed, foreshadowing last year's Shedding the Past with "Handle with Care," a track from 2006, and Djinxx's beautifully seductive track "The Foreigner" and D5's two pieces cool things down ever so slightly with some of the more house-flavoured moments of the set. But it wouldn't be Delsin without Marsel. His track "All that remains" under his Peel Seamus moniker—and in collaboration with Aroy Dee—again digs deep into the Detroit sound with lashings of '80s synth pop and offbeat piano licks intelligently propped up against the bass.